Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/28

 impressive a manner, that it excited in them the seeds of a dormant fever which blended itself with derangement, and thus produced, very naturally, a repetition of the ideas and sounds that excited their disease.

VI. From the appearances of the blood which is drawn in this disease being the same as that which is drawn in certain fevers. They are, inflammatory buff, yellow, serum and lotura carnium.

VII. From the appearances of the brain after death from madness. These are nearly the same as after death from phrenitis, apoplexy, and other diseases which are admitted to be primary affections of the blood-vessels of the brain. I shall briefly enumerate them; they are, 1, the absence of every sign of disease. I have ascribed this to that grade of suffocated excitement which prevents the effusion of red blood into the serous vessels. We observe the same absence of the marks of inflammation after several other violent diseases. Dr. Stevens, in his ingenious inaugural dissertation, published in 1811, has called this apparently healthy appearance, the "aimatous" state of inflammation. Perhaps it would be more proper to call it the "aimatous" state of disease.